Cannes – the new brand design conference

For years the mention of Cannes in the brand design world has elicited a very specific response: “It’s just an expensive way to watch ad execs downing rosé on yachts, isn’t it?”

Brand design agencies have stayed away, focusing instead on conferences like OFFF, D&AD, and the AIGA, where we can have informed conversations about brand and design with other experts.

I’m just back from three days at Cannes and can say with confidence it’s time we changed our view. Brand design agencies need to be there – here’s why.

First and foremost, clients are there. The official conference has around 15,000 attendees, and, with passes costing around €5,000, those attendees tend to be senior. Around the same number go without passes. That’s a lot of potential clients. You can arrange to meet them, but you’ll also bump into them on the street – it’s a small town and it really does feel like the world’s senior marketers decamp there for the week.

Secondly, other brand design agencies are there. It’s still very much an ad conference – or, as a stroll along the Croisette past the Amazon, LinkedIn, Google, Canva, Salesforce, Adobe, stages, houses, and cabanas shows, it’s become an adtech conference – but there is also now a strong and growing brand design side to it. COLLINS House had its third year. Industry magazine Transform hosted the House of Brand Transformation, and a vanguard of brand design agencies are there meeting clients.

Thirdly, it’s not that expensive. There’s so much happening on the fringe that you don’t need to pay for, you really don’t need a pass for the main conference. You have to be organised - register for all of them beforehand, get your wristbands, and figure out your programme – but do that and you can have a very productive Cannes for no more than the price of an Easyjet flight, an Airbnb, and some overpriced rosé.

On the subject of Airbnb, we found and booked a great place months in advance, then a few weeks out they called and said they wanted to quadruple the price. Fortunately we were able to find another place that was great, but Airbnb doesn’t police this well enough, so be wary.

Fourthly, pick your talks well and you’ll learn a lot.

I saw Nir Wezgryn, CEO of BrandOpus deliver perhaps the most detailed, considered and hard hitting talk I’ve seen on how AI is affecting branding. His conclusion on how Nike is already in trouble here but doesn’t realise it yet was striking. Nike, and many other organisations that haven’t thought through how AI is changing the way consumers find them, should be paying more attention to his diagnosis and treatment.

Mike Perry, Founder & CCO of Tavern shared how his team reshaped US fast food restaurant legend Sizzler, with sales rising more 50% in every store they revamped; the work on the brand experience has been so effective it’s allowed Sizzler to reallocate 80% of its media budget. These are the arguments brand design needs to make to CMOs – adtech has its place, but making the right brand design investments is vital to maximize spend on performance elements.

Then there was the remarkable soundbite machine that is Ogilvy UK Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland in conversation with Madison Avenue veteran Michael Farmer. It was a fascinating conversation about reimagining the agency model. Finance departments want to see outcomes from every activity they pay for, but creativity doesn’t work like that: Ogilvy Australia came up with the idea to put names on Coke cans, and it’s made Coke more than $1bn, but for that part of the work Ogilvy was only paid AUS$350k.

You just can’t tell which activities will be valuable until you do them, but finance departments can’t get their heads round this. And in a world where CPG corporates have stopped growing – P&G grew 10% a year 1960-2008 and 0.5% a year since – they’re increasingly looking for ways to cut costs. It drives agencies to spend an absurd amount of time justifying their fees, and causes a whole host of other problems, all now being turbocharged by AI. As Sutherland concluded: “There are two groups of people I don’t want to get their hands on AI: terrorists and CFOs.”

It was worth going to Cannes just to hear that line.

A final highlight was a panel hosted by Claire Blyth, Managing Partner at Red Setter (yes, she’s my business partner and wife so I definitely have to say this, but it’s still true!). She brought together Claire Robertshaw, Group ECD at Design Bridge, Emma Barratt, Global ECD at Wolff Olins, Daisy Crowder, Brand & Marketing Director at brand recruiters Craft, and former D&AD Shifter, now leading freelance strategist, Shola Ladeji to tackle the vital issue of how to bridge the gap between brand design education and work.

Right across Cannes spaces are emerging for brand design conversations. These will grow in the years ahead, and the leading brand design teams need to be a part of them.

Lastly, Cannes is fun. Sure, it was so hot, so packed, and so full of loud ad execs, but it’s still fun. Where else can you leave Aperols with your newest client, to stroll through the warm night air spellbound by the drone show over the bay, distracted by Olivia Dean performing to a couple of hundred, to dip your toes in the cooling Med? We’re lucky to work in an industry that has this type of conference in this type of place – we should make the most of it.